


Turn your shattered dreams into rhapsodies

by Dylanobrienisbatman



Series: Spacekru [1]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Childhood Trauma, Echo reflects while she paints her face for war, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Found Family, Gen, Memories, POV Echo, Sisters, Spacekru family, Support, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-18
Updated: 2018-09-18
Packaged: 2019-07-13 18:58:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16023974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dylanobrienisbatman/pseuds/Dylanobrienisbatman
Summary: While she paints her face for battle, Echo reflects on moments in her past where she had done the same, and on the loss of her innocence. Emori finds her in her own mind, and assures her that who she was, who she was forced to be, does not define her now.





	Turn your shattered dreams into rhapsodies

Echo sat on the floor of the Cave, grinding the ash from the burned branch into the watery mud in a small bowl, watching as it turned black, first in swirls and then consuming the dark brown completely. She stared into the now shiny surface, dark as night, and her mind wandered.

Back to a place before this.

Back to a time before she was loved.

Back to before the world ended.

Back to before skaikru fell.

Back to her youth.

_She was 11 when she was first brushed with war paint, white streaks across her brow and cheeks, black circles around her eyes. She sat on the floor of Queen Nia’s throne room, she could still feel the cold of the earth on her knees even now, so many years later. Her keeper, Kida, wiped the paint across her face with her fingers, aggressive and rough even then. The paint dripped into her eye, and she willed it not to water, not to run down and ruin the work already done, but if wishing could make things so she would have lived a much different life. A tear trailed her cheek and Kida’s eyes turned dark, and she reached out and smacked her across the cheek._

_“Yu gaf ge bon au? Gona nou bon au!”_

_Her face stung but she bit into her cheeks as the paint was wiped off the start again._

”Where did you go, _sofstepa_?” Emori’s kind voice broke her out of her spell, and she was back in the cave, and her cheek tingled with the distant memory.

“Thinking of the first time I ever painted my face for war. I was just a child.” Emori reached out and took the stick from her hand laying it on the ground. The soft action brought Roan’s face into her mind.

_She was barely 18, and Prince Roan was standing before her as she streaked paint across his shoulders and his neck, and up onto his cheek bones. She stood, gently painting him, as was her duty as his second in battle. She truly didn’t need to be a second anymore, but Roan was the prince and was required to train their best soldier until they could best him in a fight, which she had yet to master. He was bigger, stronger than her, with a wider stance and a heavier step. Her lithe movements and quick feet could outrun him for a while but his brute strength always won out. She finished his face, and then picked up the brush to paint her own skin, when he reached out and took it from her, taking her chin in his hand and swirling the brush over her cheek bones. That was the first time she ever felt her heart stutter in her chest._

Her heart ached with the memory of those she lost, but Emori’s face was still there, kind. Warm. Her sister. Her family.

“You knew so much war, sister. I am sorry that you have to know more violence, after so much peace.”

“War is all I’ve ever known. Why should it be different now. Just because we found peace doesn’t mean the world found peace.” Echo tugged at her jacket sleeves, angry at fate.

“Whether they found peace or not, we shouldn’t have had to fight in their wars. We are only in this because they separated us from our family.” Another flashback.

_She sat on the ground, caking her face in white paint. No one was around to do it for her, not anymore. She coated her entire face, ringing her eyes in ash, and then folllowed after skairipa. She followed on horse back to the cliff, the smell of the water below misting around her. She hadn’t meant for the sword to plunge through her gut, for her to fall over the edge. Bellamy’s face flashed through her mind as Octavia’s skin paled and blood pooled at the corner of her lip, clutching her stomach and she tumbled._

_The paint flecked off in cracked pieces as she rode back with broken swords strapped to her thigh._

War took so much from her, her whole life, but through war she had taken so much from others. It only seemed fair. Emori seemed to know where her mind had gone before she even spoke.

“Your past actions don’t deem you worthy of pain, _sofstepa_. If they did we would all be left with nothing but darkness in our future.”

“ _Snacha_ , how do you know we’re not?” Emori smiled softly, still holding the burnt stick. Echo wondered if this was the first time Emori would ever paint her face for war. She thought probably. Emori had known a different kind of war.

“Because how could we be doomed to darkness when we all have each other?”

“So optimistic!” Echo laughed, shoving at Emori’s knee.

“We are a family. We belong together. Whatever darkness there is we can get through it.”

_Belong._

_The conclave had begun._

_Patience was a gift not lightly given to those in her line of work. But it was given nonetheless._

_She watched as Roan killed the warrior from Ingranronakru, and then Trikru. She could not spare any more patience._

_Not for the lives of her clan._

_She didn’t paint her face, because cheating brought no honour to her clan, she would not mark herself for them. But she brushed the white paint over her shoulder under her coat, to feel brave. To feel strong._

_Strong like Azgeda._

_She fell back into the crowd, and slipped away unseen, and ran into the arena. She pulled her mask down over her face, slung her bow over her arm, and found her way to a high window._

_One shot._

_Sangedakru, gone._

_For Azgeda._

_She heard a scream. Skairipa. She turned to see five warriors, one of them Octavia, fighting strong._

_One fell._

_Another._

_And Octavia killed yet another._

_Skairipa stood, speaking with the warrior from Trishanakru._

_Echo aimed her arrow, and it flew into his neck._

_Another, aimed at Skairipa. It missed._

_She pulled her bow taut, waiting for them to re-emerge from behind the wall._

_Patience._

_Octavia stuck her head out._

_Loose._

_Miss._

_Patience._

_The Trishanakru warrior fell._

_Octavia ran the other way, and she waited._

_Darkness fell, the torches were lit._

_She waited._

_And then Bellamy came. She remembered her fingers closing around her throat, squeezing the life from her._

_She remembered Roan, saving her life._

_Only to banish her._

_The only place she’d ever belonged. The only people she’d ever known._

_The white paint on her hidden skin burned._

“What do we do if we can’t get them back?” She whispered, and Emori’s face softened even more.

“You will find him again, like said in the forest. How could the universe keep you apart?”

“The universe.” She scoffed. She believed so little in fate.

“I think it’s always a little bit of fate, don’t you?” She looked at her sister, curious. “Me finding John in the desert, it is how I ended up with all of you. It’s how I found a family. And then I found him again on the island, with my boat? It has to be a little bit of fate.”

“But how are Bellamy and I governed by fate? We’ve tried to kill each other more than once.” Emori laughed, and nodded, conceding.

“Yes, but you never did. And you found each other again and again. In the mountain, again outside Mt weather before the explosion, again when you were outside the bunker and he came out, and then when he found you... before we launched?” The subject had not been avoided, but it was delicate.

_The last time she had painted her skin for a fight. The last fight she would ever have. The fight with her own shame._

_She heard them calling for her. She didn’t answer. She ran her fingers over her face, leaving white streaks across her skin.She stripped down to only her lightest clothes, and lit a small candle._

_She had no clan. No home. She couldn’t go to space, with these people? These people who not only had no need for her but... why would they help her? Why would they ever choose to save her._

_Not enough food? She’d be the first one left the starve._

_Not enough air? She’d be the one allowed to suffocate to save the rest._

_They all belonged to one another, somehow._

_Even the frikdreina, with her skai boy._

_Gon Koma._

_Gon jova. She sliced her palm._

_Gon ai niron._

_Gon ai haihefa. A red palm print on her stomach._

_Gon ai kru._

_She raised her blade and held it in both hands, aiming it towards her belly._

_She pressed in and... the door opened._

_Bellamy._

_He saved her. He needed her, her strength. He had extended an arm, an olive branch. She had taken it, and through it found peace._

_The paint had stayed on her for days on the ring before they could shower, but when the water finally worked, Harper had gently helped her wipe it from her skin, speaking softly about her own choice to almost give up. About her own battle with choosing to live or choosing to stop fighting._

_For the first time in her whole life, the white water running down her skin didn’t make her think of death, but maybe of new beginnings._

Emori reached out gently and brushed a strand of hair out of her vision.

“What if we loose them Emori? I don’t... know how...”

“Know how?”

“I’ve never gone to war with someone to loose before.”

_She sat, 11 years old, hands and face, clothes and sword all drenched in blood._

_Alone._

_The room was loud with the cries of her fellow soldiers, warriors mourning their lost friends, lost loves, lost family._

_She had no one to mourn, because she had no one to love._

_No one who loved her. No one to care._

_She watched as a man wiped the blood from his friends face, and as a girl helped her lover scrub the paint, dried, from her skin._

_She stood, and walked, entirely unseen, from the room._

_She found her water bowl and filled it, scrubbing the blood away from her hands. So sticky, staining the hard of her nails, red, red, like rust, like iron. She felt herself starting to cry, tears streaming down her face, falling into the crimson water._

_Small white droplets peppered the top of the water, her war paint._

_Her mind flashed to the man who’s blood stained her palms, the woman who’s life was splattered in her face, the boy who’s life she had strangled from his own throat._

_The water was still as she stood frozen over the bowl, hands shaking in the air, their faces in her minds eye._

_Her own face grew clear in the bowl, the red making the water dark enough to reflect back on her._

_Her face, striped with white, splattered with red, rimmed with black, and streaked with her tears._

_A killer._

_A murderer_

_A child._

_Alone._

_She splashed the water onto her face, to clean the paint, and hide her own reflection from herself._

“But you do now... does it make you more afraid?”

“Not afraid but... something else. I only ever went to war afraid for myself. I don’t want to loose them.”

“We won’t.”

“You don’t know that.”

“No... no I don’t. And you’re right, we could. But if we do, you have us. You have whoever makes it out with you. We’ll be there for each other.”

“ _Swega klin, Snacha_?”

“ _Sha_.”

She reached out and lifted the bowl from the floor, pressing a finger into the mud, and reaching out to trace it down Emori’s forehead, before holding it out for her.

She took the bowl in her small hand, and dipped a larger finger into the mud, before reaching out and brushing it down between her eyes and the bridge of her nose.

“ _Gyon op, heda_.”

“ _Gyon op, heda_.”

Murphy filed in behind Emori, letting himself be painted, saying the phrase in clunky trigedaslang.

And they turned to the young girl, hair in braids, burns still wrapping around her neck, and waited for her instructions.

The paint dripped down her nose, and she waited.

The paint dried on her fingertip, and she followed.

Not for honour.

Not for courage.

Not for her heda.

Not for her clan.

But for her family.

**Author's Note:**

> Trigedasleng translations:   
> (“Yu gaf ge bon au? Gona nou bon au!” - you want to cry? Warriors don’t cry!)  
> (“Sofstepa” - cat)  
> (“Snacha” - raccoon)  
> (“Swega klin?” - promise?)   
> (“Sha” - yes)  
> (“Gon koma. Gon jova. Gon ai niron. Gon ai haihefa. Gon ai kru.” - for honour. For courage. For my kin. For my king. For my clan.)  
> (“Gyon op, heda.” - long live heda.)


End file.
